Rafael Yglesias - Fearless

Debby returned with the glasses. She put them down and looked at the strawberry in Max’s hand. “You’re allergic,” she said.

“Not anymore,” Max said. He took a bite. “I’ve had them a couple times in the past year.”

“Don’t worry if he’s allergic. I’ve got Adrenalin in my bag.”

“Whatever for?” Debby asked.

“We discovered last summer our little girl is deathly allergic to bees. She got bit—” he waved his hand to dismiss the subject. “You don’t want to know. So I’ve got a hypo with me always, in case her mother forgets to pack it.” Brillstein put a finger to his lips. “Don’t tell her that. She thinks I nag her too much, that I don’t trust her to remember important stuff. She’s right, by the way. I don’t.”

Max ate his strawberry and got to work on opening the champagne. He felt giddy with excitement too — if not about Brillstein’s apparent success, at least at the finish of all the maneuvers. Now he wouldn’t have to lie.

“Anyway! To be honest,” Brillstein said, taking one of the champagne glasses and waiting for Max to pop the cork and pour. “I had taken the one point seven million for you and the two hundred for Mrs. Fransisca and the two point three for Nan from Parker this morning despite the fact that I thought they were too low. I did it because of you.” Brillstein stared hard at Max and pursed his lips in a childish attitude of challenge.

Max popped the cork. He quickly poured the frothing liquid into the lawyer’s glass. It reminded him of the hokey chemical drinks in horror movies — Dr. Jekyll’s potion.

“I was about to blow your case,” Max said. He filled a glass for Debby and handed it to her.

“No…” Debby protested. She had another strawberry between her lips. Chocolate was smeared on them. She looked beautiful.

Brillstein was generous. He waved his glass expansively and explained to Debby, “Let’s just say I didn’t want the other side getting their hands on Max the way he was talking. So, one point seven is very good. And I got Nan two point three million, which was okay.”

“And Carla?”

“Even there I thought I’d done great. Two hundred thousand.”

“Two hundred thousand!” Debby choked slightly on the champagne. “That’s nothing. She lost a baby,” Debby insisted in a wounded tone.

Max smiled proudly at his wife and took another strawberry. The champagne was delicious.

“A baby has no earnings you can establish. I was going to argue that the Fransisca baby had a potential career as a child model but they would have shot me down. Really the compensation was for the mother’s pain and suffering and because of the negligence of the seat belt. Although she hadn’t bought him a ticket and he wasn’t entitled to the defective seat—” Brillstein waved at all that with his glass. “It’s craziness. You don’t want to know! It doesn’t matter! Listen to me!” He put his glass down on the table and spread his hands to show the scene. “I go to Gloucester House and meet Parker’s superior, Jameson. I’m not feeling like such a genius, to tell you the truth, so I don’t brag or mention the deal I had just made with Parker. Jameson doesn’t either and I figure that’s class, that’s a real WASP. His people and I have made a deal for over four million dollars that he has final approval of and we don’t even mention it. We order. Then he looks at me and says, ‘I hear your client, Mr. Klein, nearly killed himself and that Fransisca woman.’ I had a piece of bread in my mouth so I nod. Don’t want to spit crumbs all over him. He goes on, very haughty, almost angry. ‘I want to settle your three cases at this lunch. Parker’s dragging his feet. I want to get this done.’ Now I almost choke on the bread because I realize Parker hasn’t told him what we’ve tentatively ,” Brillstein, grinning, raised a finger in the air, “tentatively because it still wasn’t definite until Parker cleared it with Jameson—”

Max took another strawberry. His throat was dry from the champagne. “We get it!” he croaked at Brillstein. “What happened!”

“So I swallow all the bread,” Brillstein’s face widened into a grin, “and I say, ‘What’s your best offer? I’m happy to hear any number and discuss it.’ So he frowns — he looked incredibly pissed off — and he says, ‘I won’t pay more than four hundred thousand for the baby.’ ” Brillstein giggled.

Max tried to breathe through his nose. The champagne must have stuffed it. He swallowed the rest of his strawberry and looked around for a tissue.

Brillstein seemed disappointed in the response of his audience. “Isn’t that incredible? That was double what Parker had offered. So you know what I say? And this, I have to admit, was a stroke of genius on my part — I say, ‘I can’t take less than five hundred thousand to settle it at this lunch.’ ”

Debby frowned. “But you’d already agreed to—”

Brillstein almost jumped in his desire to cut her off. “Doesn’t matter! Once he offered more it was all off the table. He’s the one with the real authority to deal.”

“Of course,” Max tried to say, but there was little air to say it. His throat thickened. He sat down.

Brillstein moved to a chair opposite him and tapped him on the knee. “So Jameson looks furious, just furious, and he says, ‘Okay. Don’t want to quibble. That’s done.’ ” Brillstein spread his arms wide. “And here I made another great move. I took out my notepad and I wrote down Carla’s name and put the figure next to it and I had him look at it to see that I’ve got it right. Now it’s as good as a done deal and he can’t back out. Then he says, ‘As to the two architects I won’t go above a total package of eight million.’ ” Brillstein clapped his hands together and let his head go back to laugh at the heavens with triumph.

Max struggled to breathe. He sucked from his stomach but nothing could get in through his mouth. His throat had filled in; his nose was sealed. He looked at the box of strawberries and was scared.

When Brillstein brought his head back from his roar of victory, there were tears in his eyes. “We settled on you getting three point five million and Nan gets four point five.” Brillstein shook his head from side to side. “He’s finding out right now. He’s in his huge fucking corner office with his Harvard degree and he’s finding out that the Gloucester House lunch cost him four and a half million dollars!” Brillstein collapsed into guttural laughs.

Max’s forehead broke out into a sweat. He put his head between his knees. He saw his right hand turn blotchy red. His eyes swelled and ached. There was no way to breathe. He stared at the sanded narrow oak floor, the floors that had carried him from childhood until now, through all the duty and grief and joy of life, and he realized those same sanded boards would soon be his deathbed.

He fell.

The ceiling was flashing yellow. A terrible pain was in his ears.

He heard Brillstein shout—“Where the fuck is it! It’s in my fucking bag!”

Max tried to kick his legs but he couldn’t — they were fat columns — dead lumps.

Debby appeared. She was flushed. “Take it easy, Max,” she said.

“I don’t know where to do it!” Brillstein was shouting. “My wife knows!”

Debby’s face covered the flashing ceiling. She pulled at something. “You’re going to be all right, Max,” she said and then he saw her come at his heart with a needle. He tried to scream at her not to kill him but he couldn’t make any sound.

She injected him in the upper arm. She cradled the nape of his neck with her hand and tilted his head back. His suffocating mouth opened to her. She covered it with hers. He felt her hot breath enter his throat. The blockage was dissolved. She leaned back and smiled down at him. His nose suddenly cleared. The ceiling settled.